“Monkey and Me”

I was surprised when I read in National Geographic.Com that “A comparison of Clint's genetic blueprints with that of the human genome shows that our closest living relatives share 96 percent of our DNA. The number of genetic differences between humans and chimps is ten times smaller than that between mice and rats.”

With such few percentage point differences, see what we have managed to achieve in comparison with our simian cousins! We have built cities, cars and aeroplanes and have walked on moon while our cousins are still hanging from trees. Truly remarkable.

Then recently I came across a book written by Mr.Richard Conniff titled “The ape in the corner office”. This book provides a nice exposition on the similarity between the behaviour of apes and human beings. The focus of this book is more on the human behaviour in corporate setting.

The strategies we use to establish our ‘alpha’ status, grovelling and flattery we employ to get our way, the fights we have and how we makeup, how we use language to groom our colleagues and our bosses; all appear to be the same what our ancestors have been employing for millions of years. Just that the scientific progress helped us to have better and diverse tools for innovative implementation of these strategies!!.

Look at the way the Chimpanzees establish their pecking order and the alpha status. It is not just based on brute force. It is derived from a combination of the leadership skill, courage to take decision, strength of the network and also cunning and political manoeuvring; just like human organisations. The relative proportion of each element may vary. When the proportion skews more towards cunning there is a higher chance for group disintegration.

Many scientists have pointed in spite of all the scientific progress, the source of our base emotions and insecurities have not changed for millions of years. Now it has dawned on me that it is not just with respect to genes that we are 96% apes, many of us in our behaviour and inner desires resemble our ancestors more than we think we do!

Therefore, when we learn to look deep and understand the base emotions and inner drives that provoke us to act in certain fashion we may be able to have a better control on ourselves. This understanding could also help us in our relationships as it might give us a perspective on how the other person could react or why the other person reacted in certain manner.

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.” Stephen Hawking